President Rodrigo Duterte vowed on Friday to give his all-out support – in terms of prayers, legal support, and military hardware – for the soldiers of the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Army in a speech that was almost entirely serious – except that he couldn’t help cracking another rape joke.

He reminded the soldiers that, under the martial law he had declared to suppress the attacks of the Maute Group and the Abu Sayyaf in Marawi City, they could arrest anyone and search any house without a warrant.

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All they would need, as in the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos, was an arrest, search, and seizure order (ASSO), which could be signed by Gen. Eduardo Año, whose tenure he had extended for six months past his retirement age.

Duterte even said that, if he were younger, he would have wanted to fight side by side with them.

(“But if you would summon me, call the mayor, ask me to come here. I will come.”)

He told them not to worry about the implications of martial law, saying: “If you go down, I go down. But for this martial law and the consequences of martial law and the ramifications of martial law, I and I alone would be responsible. Trabaho lang kayo. Ako ng bahala (Just work. Leave everything else to me).”

(“I will go to jail for you. If you happen to have raped three women, I will own up to it. If you marry four, son of a bitch, you will get beaten…”)

He left the sentence hanging.

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The rape joke was included in the transcript provided by the Presidential Communications Office.

When he was still a presidential candidate, Duterte got a lot of flak from various groups for cracking a joke about an Australian missionary who had been reportedly raped before being killed during a prison hostage-taking incident in Davao City in 1989, when he was still vice mayor.

As of this writing, thisother rape joke, though based on a hypothetical situation, has started to get attention online. /atm

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